Shortcuts, long cuts, and the unbroken chain

The summertime NaNoWriMo event is going again, "Camp NaNoWriMo" for the uninitiated. The very last thing I want to do in July is sit and write, though. It's hot here in Northern California, and especially hot this week, with rare humidity to up the ante. I'm taking sunrise walks to try to get the step count boosted in our office FitBit competition without actually having to step outside during peak heating hours. I have a physique and temperament much more attuned to cooler autumn days, and feel that summer heat is best experienced from indoors though insulated glass, with a cooling iced coffee at hand.

Morning walks have advantages. Solitude, for one, and lovely views that remind me why I'm glad to live where I live, when the sun and ongoing drought is trying to turn us all into people jerky.



This view, for example, which greeted me as I headed off in a new-to-me direction, and discovered a park that I'd never visited before. I think I've found the site of next year's Typewriter Day celebration, for sure. I look at a slightly different face of this mountain from my office. It's good to see it in a different context. I also got to be warned on the way out of the park with the possibility of mortal peril. That wakes you up a bit:



That arrow is pointing in the exact opposite way I intended to travel, of course. And from this vantage, I wasn't entirely sure where I was. So, instead of making a poor choice and taking the short-cut to the right along a busy sidewalk-less street, I veered left, looking for landmarks. Being the suburbs, it didn't take long: the trail crosses the street at a known point, so I set off along it, thinking that eventually it would give me the option to go right again, back to home and breakfast. And yes, after a lot of wandering and one bad turn up a service road, I made it. The long route was worth it in the end, terminating just up the street from the campus where I set up for this year's Typewriter Day.

My pace was easy, and I passed only three people for the hour I was out. I was in no hurry, though shortcuts were plentiful, if not particularly useful.



I know I've spent a lot of bytes here alternating talking up NaNoWriMo and bemoaning not having the motivation to sit down and really finish any of the many, many drafts that are stacking up in my life. I've started and stopped multiple times, and spent more time searching for "the one true editing solution" than I have actually revising.

Let's face it, it's a slog. A long, tedious slog, and there's no short-cut for it. Ignore the signs at your peril, and prepare to be run down by criticism if you do. And most importantly, take it a step at a time.

I read Jerry Seinfeld's "Don't Break the Chain" advice for the first time a few weeks ago, and I've been (of course) procrastinating about applying it. But with the news about Camp NaNo starting up again, and a fresh month on the calendar, and the good habits of daily steps under my feet... I think it's time to break out the red marker and set up my own unbroken chain this summer, even if the trail is long and points the wrong way.

Bit by Bit (by dip)

That color shifting tells me I need to flush out my pen a little better. Inspired by Richard, I pulled out the dip pen, though I skipped the inkwell and went straight for the bottle. Like my life these days, the pen lightens by degrees.

Did anyone else see the mention of ITAM in the Washington Post's Style blog? It crossed my news feed reader this week. I suppose this means we have an even greater air of legitimacy now. Not having a typewriter out and available does seriously impact my hands-on time. I think I need to figure out a way to keep a permanent block of "me time" on the schedule, and rotate through activities by season. Spring is CYO track and field, October and November are NaNo. It's easy for worker-bee types like myself to forget that we need to take some down time, too, even if it's just little sips now and then.

The pedometer I mentioned is a FitBit Zip, by the way. My wife and I each have one, which I recommend, since we're naturally competitive with each other. (Scrabble games on Facebook get ugly fast.) We're trying to outdo each other's daily steps, knowing that each is quite busy either with an office job or homeschooling. On Fridays, for example, I've been making it a point to head to the library. But it is raining, quite hard at times, and I'm feeling particularly Blerchy today as a result. But I know it's a mile each way to the library on foot, and that will put me in the lead of Mrs. Clickthing. And our dog is rain-phobic, so I know she won't be boosting steps by taking the pooch around the block a few times. Fitness domination is mine!

Hello, World!

Typed on a 1957 Underwood Universal (from the post-ENIAC age)



What I didn't mention in the typecast is that this means I'm also dipping my toe into being a mobile-computing-device-owner, although I have yet to desire or need a "smart" phone. What's driving this decision is mainly my desire to edit my novel, and not having any time in which to do it, or access to the home computer (where the draft resides) when I do have the time. Inspired by this photo of an AlphaSmart/tablet hookup and Mr. Speegle's own foray into the tablet-driven revision lifestyle (and emboldened with unspent Christmas cash from my family) I'm dipping my toes in. So it's all for writing, you see, and not solely gadget lust.

That's my story, anyhow. If you could have told 30-years-ago-me that I've be able, in my lifetime, to have Star-Trek like technology in my lap, and program it, I would have scoffed you right out of my room. Not that I would have been able to hear you over the din of the cassette drive, mind you.

Time Slip

How did it get to be almost the middle of September already? It's been over two weeks since a blog update from me, and I don't even have the excuse of taking a vacation to cover for it. I've been utterly swamped at work, and that's not leaving me much energy or inclination for outside pursuits, beyond keeping my reading list stocked and my library card in regular use. There are worse ways to pass the time.

The kids are in school, fall sports are under way, and the calendar is creeping towards November whether or not I am prepared for it. My summer rewrite plans hit a bit of a snag when I realized that the draft I was rewriting was exceptionally, deadly dull stuff. I don't think I'm being overly self-critical here. If anything, I'm pleased that I could distance myself enough from the writing to realize that large chunks of it are simply idling or linguistic plate-spinning, when what I need is a good crash and some broken crockery to liven things up. I'm not sure how to approach a fix, though. That's put me in a bit of a writing funk, too.

I'm still here, though. Still breathing and demonstrating a fair amount of restraint at the odd typewriter that's crossed my path. There's a small rhino on my desk, reminding me that soon we'll be slipping into that annual word frenzy and the working vacation of NaNo. September is beginning to slip by, but I won't let the season of the Brigade pass.

Illustrator Redux

Once again, I get to show off how little I actually know. A few things I've learned since my initial call for an illutrator:

1. There are a lot of talented people out there
2. I should probably not ask for help over vacation, since I'm offline most of the time, and those same talented people now probably think I'm rude/dead
3. I'm actually only one of those things
4. It's probably a good idea to nail down the cover illustration while your draft is being read and revised, and not after, so you don't have this nagging sense that the process has come to a crashing halt, when in fact it's just taking The Right Amount of Time
5. There is no number 5
6. I know nothing about how to spec illustrations, or how this process is "supposed" to work
7. "Illustration" is a very broad term, which appears to mean "anything other than a photograph"

To everyone that's contacted me: I'm sorry I have not replied, please see point #2, above. One person is taking a swing at the cover, but as per #6, I don't know if it's standard/polite/acceptable to also ask other people to do the same, at the same time. That feels a bit unfair to me, and considering that the stakes are so low, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up. But clearly there's artsy talent out there, waiting to be tapped.

So, here's my promise to all the illustrators that I have been rude/dead to: I'm re-reading this year's NaNoWriMo draft, with the intent of digitizing the same and unleashing it on my unawares pre-readers. When that happens, I'll put out another call for a cover for that book, per #4. I can only do that, however, if I also learn what's expected of me. Illustrators, what do you need from an author?

Spinout

I crossed a major NaNoWriMo milestone today. I've only got around 10,000 words to go to make the 50,000 mark, which is around four days worth of concentrated writing. So why is this Rhino looking so peeved?



It's because I've jumped into my second plot (the backstory section of the book), and that's less clearly defined than the main journey of my protagonist and his friends. I started off the month with sketches of these second-story characters, but I did not know who they were, thinking at the time that they would be Mysterious and Secret.

The characters had other plans.



They got all up in my face, yo this weekend, demanding that I spend some time figuring out who they were, where they came from, and what they were like. I learned all sorts of things -- one drove a laundry truck, the other fled North Korea. They are connected in a way that I did not expect, but which fits with the overall story perfectly (they knew this all along, I'm sure.) Both have exceptional gifts in their own way, though both are ultimately doomed. And maybe that's why they have been staring at me all weekend from the platen, demanding that I sort their sh*t out before I dispose of them. I've spun my wheels a lot these past four days, trying to figure out which of the many histories is truly theirs, and trying to see how they fit together into the bigger puzzle. They're getting their moment on the page before they are written off.

So, I've laid down a lot of words these past few days, but I know that many of them are destined for the axe. I'm still trying to get some traction on their stories, but right now am sliding all over the page. I'll settle it eventually, but I need to get back on track, because even though the word counter says I'm close to being done, I'm not. Right now, I'm just spinning my wheels.

Keeping the Rhino Fed

Weekends are tough for me at NaNo time. There's usually a couple of kid-related activities to attend to, plus action-packed items on my honey-do list, like cleaning gutters and taking down the Halloween cobwebs from the porch. Unlike weekdays when I'm operating on a schedule, it's tough to get a distraction-free writing session completed. I'm still getting up early, which gives me an hour or so to get something down on paper, but my catch-up lunch sessions fall away until Monday. I honestly dread Thanksgiving break for this same reason.

Don't get me wrong: I love my kids and my family, and being busy and all. But November is the time to feed the Rhino, and I enjoy that, too. So, I'll squeeze in what writing I can this weekend, maybe bring out a pica machine to fool myself into writing more. Six pages per day is my goal, regardless of type size. Come Monday, though, I know there's going to be a hungry beast lurking on the keys, waiting for sustenance.

The Good, The Bad, and the Secondary Characters

Typed on the Camp machine, a Smith-Corona Silent Super

Back in the Saddle

Typed on "Gomez," the Olympia SM3

A Study in Stripes

Typed on the pica Smith-Corona Silent Super:

...which looked like this when we first met. (Just to be clear, this is not the new rescue machine, which will have photos later.)

A Word From Muses Local #128

Typed on a Lettera 32

Back to School

There's been a little discussion over on the flickr AlphaSmart forum about NaNoWriMo, and (as is often the case there) the topic has broadened into talking about other writing machines, and old computers we've had, and of course, I've butted in and talked up typewriters and the Typewriter Brigade. Regular readers will know that I spent quite a bit of time using my AlphaSmart Pro to retype last year's draft, originally written on a Royal KMG and a Smith-Corona Skyriter. We talked about OCR software in the Brigade topic last year in the NaNo forums, and I did some experiments, as I have access to a sheet-feeding scanner on our office copier. The best of the choices open to me appeared to be the Tesseract OCR engine which I installed somewhere in early November, ran it on scans of my pages thus far, and then quit when it spat out a bunch of text like "1112 98djhs do pifu hjegf"

Not helpful.

So, I dug out the AlphaSmart and spent time retyping it with the goal of getting my proof printed before the deadline. (Just made it.) The AlphaSmart has strengths like super-portability and super-simplicity which are ideal for producing words, but I ultimately wanted to see more of the text at a time as I was rewriting or laying in my changes from the typed copy, something impossible to do in the 4x40 confines of the AlphaSmart window. And after typing all that stuff in, I'm burned out on the whole book in general right now.

So, I'm thinking about looking back into OCR as an option for this year. Tesseract is a very no-frills OCR program, and lacks pretty interfaces and intuitive controls, but that's OK, since I am, at heart and by choice, a geek. I've been reading more about training Tesseract -- sending it to school, essentially -- and am thinking about writing up some sample pages on my main machines that I can use to refine its guesses. My own retyped copy has a number of transcription errors, beyond the usual first-draft grammar hangups and plot issues. If you see a typecast discussing a lazy dog, jumping foxes, and brown liquor jugs, know that school's in session.

Dear Novel

I appear to be an idiot

...because I simply cannot get the comments thing to work on various blogs, specifically Monda's, Joe Van Cleave's, and his grandson's (Line Writer.) It's some kind of voodoo with the embedded comments form, and I thought that it might have to do with a browser plugin -- I'm using NoScript -- but I'm unable to do this even running other browsers.

Normally I have nothing but love for Blogger, but if I can't leave snarky, irrelevant comments on your blogs, what motivation will you have to leave the same on mine?

No Excuses

Typed on my cleaned-up 1957 Silent-Super

Wimping out

Note: the opinions expressed by ancient Greek goddesses either real or imaginary do not necessarily reflect those of the management.